This invention relates generally to a bone implant and particularly to a bone implant for securing artificial teeth to a jaw bone. For this purpose the body plate and the neck of the implant are inserted into the bone and the tooth is secured to a post carried by the neck and protruding from the bone when the body plate has been inserted into the bone.
Such implants may be made from metal, ceramics or synthetic resin and comprise a body plate, which is wedge-shaped in cross-section or has parallel broadsides and is apertured or non-apertured and is formed with elongated elevations and/or depressions extending on both sides of the body plate transversely to its longitudinal direction, i.e. the direction from the outer end of the body plate to its inner end.
The body plate is inserted into a recess or slit which has previously been formed in the jaw bone by milling, and carries one or two or three posts, which are integral with the body plate. In the known implants, the above-mentioned surface elevations and depressions of the body plate have in cross-section the shape of saw-teeth which point toward or away from the outer end of the body plate. These sawteeth are intended to assist the retaining of the implant as soon as it has been inserted, and to increase the contact surface between the implant and the tissue. But a dentist must repeatedly pull out and re-insert the implant in order to ensure a proper fit, e.g., when the body plate must be deformed or must be deflected with respect to the post or for other changes of the implant. The sawtooth shape of the elevations and depressions has the disadvantage that portions of the body tissue in contact with the implant are torn off whenever the implant is pulled out so that the slit formed in the bone for receiving the implant is enlarged and the friction between the bone and the implant is reduced and is finally lost. As a result, a very large growth of new bone is required to retain the implant and the latter is movable immediately after its insertion until the bone has healed.